Two things you should check to make this example work how you're attempting.

- Is your file UTF-8 encoded (I usually use the *NIX file command or check VI's :set fileencoding to verify this -- although there may be other ways to do this)
- Do you have a use utf8 at the beginning of your script?

Whenever you're using UTF-8 content within the body of your script (as you're doing in your example at least) you need to make sure you tell perl that it should use character semantics rather than byte semantics on that data. This is accomplished by placing a use utf8 within the lexical scope that you're using UTF-8 data. This also makes it unnecessary to perform the Encode::_utf8_on() operation.

However, as noted in bold in the utf8 docs: "Do not use this pragma for anything else than telling Perl that your script is written in UTF-8". If you're retrieving data from a GET/POST parameter or from a database, it's a different story.

Brian

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